I agree with your general point, David, but you can overdo it. Underlying
the general thrust of the law are power relations that are if not wholly
independent of the law, at least explanatorily prior to it. I am now reading
Peter Linebaugh's The Many Headed Hydra, which discusses, among other
things, the sort of struggle between the traditional and popular assertion
of the right of the poor to the commons and the claims of the rising
capitalist class to private property, expressed in enclosure laws (among
other things) that privatized those commons. Those enclosure laws sprang
from the political power of an economically emergent class that used the
power of the state, including its power to reefine property relations, to
remake what counted as property. In the New World, the expropriation of
common Indian land as [private European property was much more naked and
independent of prior law, at least of Indian "law" or custom, as could be.
--jks
>
>Jim Devine writes:
>
>------------------------------
>right, the law is "relatively autonomous" from capitalism, i.e., what
>serves the long-term (class) interests of capital. A law which serves
>capital in one era can hurt capital in another.
>
>------------------------------
>
>I need clarification. The argument is repeatedly made on this list that
>there is no such thing as a "free market" and "private property" because
>the
>market and property is defined by the laws that regulate the market and
>property. If so, how can capitalism be autonomous from the law? Is not
>capitalism, by definition, defined by the law that creates and regulates
>markets and property in any specific context? I mean, if there is no law
>defining property, how can there be "capitalism?" Does this make any
>sense?
>
>David Shemano
>
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